Who here started out on BBSs?

[LoZoccolo]

Online since 1987! I had the Vicmodem for my Commodore 64 (didn't have to use that for long, it really sucked as far as garbled characters) and used to have a list of BBSs I'd try to reach every day!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Me.

On my Commodore SX-64, which morphed into a succession of Amigas.

[phusion]

2. Total nerd here...

Participated on BBSs throughout the early 90s. Played door games and even went to a real-life door game meeting of ultra nerds of all ages :)

I remember some of the BBSs introduced some of these new features called Usenet, FTP, and Gopher and they were all the shiznit! Then my dad received a dialup (Winsock) account from work to this magical thing called the "internet" in '94. I think I started my first free webpage on geocities in '96. If I knew then what I know now, I would have snatched up domain names that were all free at the time. Agh!

edit: Even went to 2600 meetings and busted into party-lines and designed red boxes and other phreaking devices. But that's a whole 'nother story...:)

[mike_c]

3. raises hand....

Online since the late 80's.

[salvorhardin]

4. This was my first connection to the internet...

...of course, it was still DARPANet back then.

[mike_c]

7. that's an awesome picture....

Reminds me of my first experience with computers. Friend of mine was working for a small company-- like three employees-- that did Cobol programming on a contract basis. Must have been in the late '70's or so. Anyway, he was working late one night, and I was tripping on mescaline, so naturally I stopped by to try and shake him loose from work. He sat me down at a console and fired up one of the VERY OLD Star Trek games-- totally console text, not even any ASCII graphics. Sometime in the early AM we went out to the parking lot and smoked a joint in his car, listening to Frank Zappa on the eight track. Then back to zapping Klingons.

[salvorhardin]

5. dupe

[tridim]

6. C=64 and a 300 baud modem

I was quite the teen pirate back in the early BBS days.

[autorank]

8. TI 707 w/built in Thermal Printer, "portable," 1981. Oh yeah!!!

Those were the days. We had to walk to the Public Data Network (PDN) through 300 baud of blazing traffic, uphill all the way. Then things began picking up in 1982 and we got TI's with the farking Thermal Printers built in at 1200 baud. Rock on. I then remember when you could get 9600baud on a public line in 1986. Bitchin.

Anybody remember a product called PC Pursuit? If you were an uber BB type, you could get Telenet (the vastly superiod PDN) for $25.00 a month after hours (7:00PM local until about 6:00AM local). That really spiced things up and let people go national.

Then there was Edunet and Educom...those were the days! (Seriously, they were.)

[sleipnir]

9. I hear you there!

BBS all the way. First way I started with the 10 finger discount.

And early "posting" with thoughts and comments

I loved the games, where you could play and score against a small group of players. Who will get the highest score this week!?

Good times, good times.

[Hugin]

10. Radio Shack CoCo here... w/ Extended BASIC.

Bought in 1982 (I think).

Even had the ETASM+ Assembler Cartridge... Build by
a little fledgling company called, Microsoft!

[Hugin]

11. Funny thing is...

I hooked it up the other day and IT STILL DID EVERYTHING
I WANTED A COMPUTER TO DO!

:)

[Jamastiene]

12. Online since 1997, but go to enjoy

"Swords of Chaos" on Carlina Online before they scrapped the BBS. Used Worldgroup to connect. It was great. I miss it terribly to be honest.

[AntiCoup2K4]

13. Started out with the C-64 and a little known BBS called "Quantum Link"....

....which started out exclusively a Commodore based system, but eventually included Mac users in the late 80's and then went on to PC's as they became standardized.

Around that time, Quantum Link changed their name....

to "America Online"

Thing is, they SUCKED even then. How they ever got as huge as they did is beyond any rational understanding.


More interesting than that is the BBS I was on in the mid 90's, just before the Web as we know it took off. It was a network of survivalist militia nutjobs, some of whom would put the Freepers to shame for sheer insanity, including a white supremacist "reverend" from North Carolina, a Texas-seperatist from somewhere near Austin, and a retired pilot from Alaska who refused to use the banking system in any way - not talking just credit cards here, but even checking accounts. I think he even refused to carry Federal Reserve Notes. How he ever flew a plane with a huge bag of coins tied to his leg would be the question.

Somehow I conned myself into a moderator position on this ultra-right wing network, in a religious discussion area, no less. So I was never bored with these wackos, that's for sure.

Scary part is that this was 1994-95. These fuckers were still HOT over the Waco thing, and there were definitely messages being sent back and forth about "a warning shot being fired on April 19". I never saw the names "Tim McVeigh" or "Terry Nichols" on any of them, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that somebody I spoke with on that network knew those fuckers.

Unfortunately, I lost touch with all those guys (the network's "management" got tired of me defending liberals and "sodomites") and moved on to the real Internet. I would genuinely like to ask some of those guys what they think about 9-11-01 and what Bush has done to this country.

Hell of a learning experience into the minds of right wing extremists though.

[LoZoccolo]

14. I was on Q-Link too.

I didn't go on much because they charged by the hour and it cost quite a bit of money.

I had some enemies from the local BBS scene who thought it would be funny to use my name and address to sign up for Q-Link with a stolen credit card. I think the idea may have also been that they knew I already had it, so when I'd get the little Q-Link magazine in the mail, or get it twice, I wouldn't notice.

The problem with that was that the Q-Link account I used was in my dad's name. It's funny that they didn't think of this, because I was only like 13 years old and couldn't have had my own credit card to sign up. So when I got two Q-Link magazines in the mail, one with my name on it, and I knew that Q-Link wasn't supposed to have my name, I knew something was up.

I'm not sure why I didn't call them myself, but it was actually my mom who spoke with Q-Link, and they told her the account was given a stolen credit card. No big deal really, they just cancelled the account. I called up the guy who I suspected did it, and told him that Q-Link knew the credit card was stolen, and I remember he sounded all scared like he was about to freak out. "YOU DIDN'T GIVE THEM MY NAME DID YOU??!!" Ha ha ha ha! One minute he was thinking he was all slick, and the next minute he was this cowering little guy.